Dear Susanna [so the letter read], There's a new man in your house at Farnham. His name is John Hathaway, but he's made all over and it was high time. I say it's the hand of God! He won't own up that it is, but I'm letting him alone, for I've done quarreling, though I don't like to see a man get religion and deny it, for all the world like Peter in the New Testament. If you have n't used up the last one of your seventy-times-sevens, I think you'd better come back and forgive your husband. If you don't, you'd better send for your son. I'm willing to bear the burdens the Lord intends specially for me, but Jack belongs to you, and a good-sized heavy burden he is, too, for his age. I can't deny that, if he is a Hathaway. I think he's the kind of a boy that ought to be put in a barrel and fed through the bunghole till he grows up; but of course I'm not used to children's ways.
Be as easy with John at first as you can. I know you 'll say I never was with my husband, but he was different, he got to like a bracing treatment, Adlai did. Many's the time he said to me, “Louisa, when you make up our minds, I'm always contented.” But John is n't made that way. He's a changed man; now, what we've got to do is to keep him changed. He does n't bear you any grudge for leaving him, so he won't reproach you.
Hoping to see you before long, I am,
Yours as usual,
Louisa Banks.
XI. “The Open Door”
On the Saturday evening before the yearly Day of Sacrifice the spiritual heads of each Shaker family called upon all the Believers to enter heartily next day into the humiliations and blessings of open confession.
The Sabbath dawns upon an awed and solemn household. Footfalls are hushed, the children's chatter is stilled, and all go to the morning meal in silence. There is a strange quiet, but it is not sadness; it is a hush, as when in Israel's camp the silver trumpets sounded and the people stayed in their tents. “Then,” Elder Gray explained to Susanna, “a summons comes to each Believer, for all have been searching the heart and scanning the life of the months past. Softly the one called goes to the door of the one appointed by the Divine Spirit, the human representative who is to receive the gift of the burdened soul. Woman confesses to woman, man to man; it is the open door that leads to God.”
Susanna lifted Eldress Abby's latch and stood in her strong, patient presence; then all at once she knelt impulsively and looked up into her serene eyes.